People in the Abau and Rigo districts in the Central province have been urged to celebrate responsibly this festive season, due to the fact that the Abau District Hospital in Kupiano and the Kwikila Interim Provincial Hospital scaling down their operations. According to Central Provincial Health Authority Director Curative Health Services Dr. Maru Garo, they have scaled down their operations at both hospitals to maintain their emergency services, labour ward, the inpatient care and the X-Ray services. He said, the scale down begins today, the 24th of December 2024 and will continue until the 2nd of January 2025. “We are scaling down the operations so the staff can concentrate on the emergency service because we are anticipating an increase of the number of patients that will be coming in, especially with trauma cases.” He said, with the scale down, only twelve to ten stuff members will be on duty during the festive operations. Dr. Garu further encouraged the people to take care of themselves due to the low supply of medical drugs as well at this time. “For quite a while now, our medical supplies have not been really coming in on time and that's from the Area Medical Stores. But for now, we’ve got our orders from Medical Store, and they’ve packed them, and they should be out by this week. We will then distribute them to the two hospitals.” Dr. Garo also extended his best Christmas wishes to all the people of Central province and urged for a trouble-free Christmas this year, urging the people to celebrate responsibly.